Buying a 4G Phone? Wait, Make Sure It Has Enough Gas...

Hmmmm… CES is now over.  So, what did we learn?  Well one things is that there is some frustrating news for AT&T or Sprint customers who bought a cutting-edge 4G smartphone last year. That phone will soon be outdated (big surprise).  So make sure you've explored your entire checklist before making that flight...

However, there is something different about this jump.  Some of you out there are old enough to remember the leap from dialup speeds to DSL, I mean wow was that an improvement.  Well that's the magnitude of leap we are talking about here. Basically, an order of magnitude larger in performance. After 10 years of development, the concepts of Long Term Evolution (LTE) is finally showing up in the phones today.

4G LTE

LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, and it lives up to its name. It has been in development for around 10 years now, and has begun to see some releases worldwide. The very first LTE network was launched by TeliaSonera in Norway and Sweden at the end of last year.

• Much faster upload and download speeds than 3G (usually single digit megabit speeds). Under ideal conditions, LTE can easily reach download speeds of over 150 megabits per second, and upload speeds of over 80 megabits per second. To give you a comparison, my relatively zippy home network has download speeds of 20 megabits and upload at 10 Mbps.
•  More capacity than 3G – an LTE network can support more users in a single area
• Larger cell size. A single LTE cell tower can cover up to 100km. While that size will be greatly diminished in a heavy urban area, it’s still a lot better than 3G
• Compatability. LTE is designed to be compatible with existing standard.
• Ease of upgrade. Part of the reason it has taken so long to develop LTE is that it is planning forward a lot. The networks are being designed so that implementing upgrades further down the line will be much easier.

Just in Case, here is some realworld tests:

• Verizon 4G LTE Thunderbolt - 13.13 down 41.72 MB up
• T-Mobile 4G HSPA+ G2 - 2.51MG down .39 Up
• Sprint 4G Wimax Samsung Epic - 3.83 down .69 up

How does LTE do it?  Here it is in a nutshell:

Imagine the current network is a 5 lane highway, LTE will increase that highway to 20 lanes!

This new highway has specific lanes for data (streaming video, gaming), text messaging, and calls which means everything will be pushed to the “correct” lane making everything more organized and faster.

This means in simple terms 4 things:

1. LTE will handle more network congestion with ease (once this network has capped out)
2. High priority information like voice calls will get priority with their own “lanes” meaning better quality of sound and speed (and more calls can be handled)
3.   More “lanes” mean more channels are open for data traffic so things like browsing, downloading and gaming can be performed much quicker and easier
4. LTE packages all these different things more closely together (imagine 5 cars fitting side by side in ONE lane) without any chance of collisions (as it’s all handled electronically)

 Some Things You Should Know…

All sounds great, right? Verizon traditionally has been a CDMA carrier, meaning there was no SIM card used or needed with its 3G EVDO network, so the transition to a GSM (SIM Card) based tech will not be without its hitches. 

The first generation won’t be using LTE for voice, instead they will revert back to the older CDMA, which is ok because voice is usually small packets and does not require the bandwidth that data uses. Also, when you’re in a area not supported by LTE, you will revert back to an older EVDO technology when LTE is not available, which will translate to a severe drop in speed usually down in the 3 Megabit arena. Now Verizon has not verified that users will be able to use voice and data simultaneously, but this will reveal itself soon enough. 

This brings us to AT&T.  The carrier has lagged behind in their 4G rollout (Mid 2011 for some markets, end of 2012-2013 for the rest) but if you believe the hype, that is because they were busy allocating resources on their HSPA + network (more on that below), which will let users fall back to speeds in the 6Mbps range, and not experience just a huge drop in speed.   This will allow for simultaneous voice and data (as AT&T currently has) and a theoretical seamless speed transition.

So the choices are An already established and growing Verizon LTE network with a slow legacy network, or wait it out for AT&T meanwhile using their faster HSPA + ( 6 Megabits) as a fall back.  Between you and me and the watercooler, I think Verizon is the way to go…  AT&T moves like an iceberg when it comes to technology.

Sources:

1)   http://www.connectedmagazine.ca/magazine-archives/index.html?catalog=virtual_lte2011/catalog.swf

2)   http://www.knowyourcell.com/news/1178551/atts_lte_network_is_slightly_faster_than_verizons.html

So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”

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About Rick Ricker

An IT professional with over 20 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.

For more information, contact Rick at (800) 333-8394 x 689